Slime
I've encountered a hundred different gelatinous creatures in my career, and though they've all tried to eat me in a hundred different ways, I can never say I've truly met any of them. But one came close. It hid its face from the light of my torch and pleaded for its mother in the common tongue, and when I lowered my flame, it lowered its hands, I got one look at the dwarf skull inside the translucent ooze and ran from the cave.
-Oro Deepore, Spelunker
'Sapient Slime' might sound like an oxymoron, but countless first-hand reports insist that it's true. A translucent humanoid made of semisolid ooze mounted on a single stalk of thick goo instead of two legs, with a visible skull inside its head and sometimes a dozen veribrae and other bones floating inside its body. It can think, speak, sympathize and empathize and experience a variety of emotions, as well as wear armor, wield weapons, and even master spellcraft.
Unwilling Symbiosis
Under exceptional circumstances, when a pudding, jelly, or ooze completely consumes a sapient humanoid, something unprecidented happens in the digestion process. Though the victim is killed and their body dissolved, their fleshless skull - and something spiritual - remains intact inside the ooze and transforms the mindless creature into something more.
Over the course of the next few years, the ooze gradually undergoes something of a gestation period in which whatever consciousness or sapience that remains inside the skull permeates into the ooze and causes it to evolve. Physically at first, the ooze coagulating and solidifying and becoming more dense as it lifts the skull onto something resembling a neck, grows two arms and eight fingers and two thumbs, and finally stacks itself onto a long stalk of slime that supports its form. The slime's body almost always matches it's skull and resembles the proportions of the humanoid it absorbed. Almost nothing psychological remains from the victim of this amalgamation except a sense of self-awareness, a yearning for learning, and a very human urge to preserve itself.
A Newborn Abomination
A slime's first few years in the world are full of harsh lessons and cruel realities. When it finally musters the confidence and curiosity to leave whatever ruin or tunnel that it was incubated in, it has no idea that its kin are considered monsters and mindless devourers to the civilized world. Its first encounter with a hunter in the woods or merchant on the road will be met with fear or hostility. If it finds a town, it will likely be immidiately destroyed by the militia, or captured and subjected to testing by the local alchemist or wizard, or find itself in a travelling circus and paraded as a sideshow act.
If none of these things happen and a slime finds someone benevolent enough to mentor it, or a library where it can hide during the day and read during the night, or even finds a group of slimes that have created a haven for their kin, it has the potential to learn and grow and become something greater than the sum of it's parts, just an old skull and a mound of shapeless ooze. Even a morbid abomination can make a difference in the world, whether for good or for ill.
Slime Names
Most slimes pick their names based on their first words - usually just an onomatopoeia of the ooze moving or releasing built-up air from inside their body - which they cling to as an anchor of their sapience and repeat inside their minds as they develop, as though to repeatedly remind themselves that they're alive, lest they slip back into the animalistic oblivion that is an ooze's consciousness.
Slimes make no distinction between male and female when they're born, and have no evidence of what the gender of the skull in which they're inhabiting was before it was consumed, but some slimes are later assigned one or the other by other humanoids, or pick a gender themselves.
Slime Names: Helk, Poloph, Slehth, Gopi, Mulphup, Thelbem, Forl, Slith, Blipa, Squilk, Thep, Gorgerl, Lep.
Slime Personality
Though a slime learns quickly and soaks up experiences like a sponge and develops an identity at a breakneck pace, there is a chance that it might retain random quirks from the humanoid that used to inhabit its skull. You can use the Slime Quirks table to determine what traits remain.
Slime Quirks
| d8 | Quirk |
|---|---|
| 1 | You still carry the name of the missing humanoid. This can cause some uncomfortable questions. |
| 2 | The smell of certain foods fill you with nostalgia. |
| 3 | You have a tick or fidget that you can't stop. |
| 4 | Even if you've never been introduced to the concept of religion, you are extremely pious. |
| 5 | You claim a kinship with the race of your skull. |
| 6 | You are convinced that you have certain talents that you can't back up. |
| 7 | Despite your lack of hair or skin, you're prone to preening and grooming yourself. |
| 8 | You keep as the gender of your consumed humanoid. |
Slime Traits
Your slime character has the following racial traits.
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2.
Age. Slimes live as long as it takes to finally break down the skull inside, which averages at about 30 years.
Alignment. Slimes are born neutral, but can become jaded from the animosity other races show them. Alternatively, this prejudice can motivate them to protect others.
Size. Your size depends on the race of your skull. Pick small or medium.
Speed. Regardless of your size, slimes can't move faster than a base walking speed of 25 feet.
Blindsight. You have no eyes inside the sockets of your skull, but your gelatinous body can sense vibrations. You can see in darkness within 60ft of you as though it were bright light, and you're immune to blinding, but you can't see color.
Corrosive Core. As part of a short or long rest, you can choose to completely disintegrate one nonmagical object that can fit entirely inside your torso.
Acidic Grip. Your unarmed attacks deal acid damage, and if you grapple an enemy, they take acidic damage equal to 1d6 + your Constitution Modifier, repeating for each of their turns that they fail to escape your grapple.
Amorphous. You can move through any space big enough to fit your skull without squeezing.
Absorption. If you have access to a water source or possess 2 pints of water, you can recover HP equal to half your level (rounding up). Recharges after a long rest.
Languages. The memories in your skull allow you to speak, read, and write Common and one extra language of your choosing. Slimes speak with a bubbling, sloughing dialect that can be hard to understand.